Minnesota, Invicta is (to me) a disposable watch. The Hamilton is a great looking keeper. There is no comparison.

- Sam

I agree.

I have been quiet here lately, but just before the 4th I went back to the pawn shop and bought the Grand Diver. After wearing my new digital compass watch for a few days the 47mm Grand Diver didn't seem so huge anymore. I wore it over the weekend and off and on last week. Initially I liked having the new piece of bling on my wrist. Once the novelty wore off I found I was bothered by the mass of the thing. Plus I kept mumbling to myself, "It's not the Hamilton, It's not the Hamilton".

So on Friday I brought it back. The guy at the pawn shop had given me 1 week to try it out. If I didn't like it I could bring it back for a full refund. So now I am still looking for sweet deals on the Hamilton. Plus I want to buy a Winchester rifle for deer hunting and a snow plow for my Ford Ranger so I can plow the driveway back to our new house this winter.

Money, money, money.

__________________
To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize. -Voltaire

Alright it's time for me to give back a little love to this thread that I have enjoyed. By the way, I think it's probably this thread that drove me into the watch obsession and caused me to buy this thing in the first place.

Anyway, here is my Hamilton Aquadate. I got it via ebay a couple years ago.

- Sam

I've always liked Hamiltons because my grampa had one and passed it onto my mum, who then passed it on to me. I guess I could take a nice photo and post a pic of that one some other day.

Doh! you know i was just looking around for stuff at work to take pics on... didn't even cross my mind about the magnets... I dont think they have been removed from that drive either... hummmm. It doesnt seem to be suffering any effects... maybe i got lucky, or the massive stainless (non magnetic) case shielded the mechanism.

You can tell i'm new to this watch thing...

You got lucky. Your massive stainless steel case didn't do anything. Actually, the way mechanicals and automatics are "shielded" from magnetic fields is by having a soft pure iron ring inside, around the movement. You can't really shield something from a magnetic field; you can only redirect the magnetic field through what you want it to go through, so it doesn't go through what you don't. Thus, the soft iron ring.

If you find your auto or mech suddenly gaining 5-50 minutes a day, chances are good that you got the movement magnetized. Not to worry - the problem is cured quickly with a jeweler's demagnetizer.

I bought that very one after the third time I magnetized my IWC Ti Aquatimer. The third time was when I played with all the hands-on experiements with my kids in a science museum which was doing a special exhibit on electricity and magnetism! Yeah, not the smartest thing to wear your automatic wristwatch to!

Alright it's time for me to give back a little love to this thread that I have enjoyed. By the way, I think it's probably this thread that drove me into the watch obsession and caused me to buy this thing in the first place.

Anyway, here is my Hamilton Aquadate. I got it via ebay a couple years ago.

- Sam

I've always liked Hamiltons because my grampa had one and passed it onto my mum, who then passed it on to me. I guess I could take a nice photo and post a pic of that one some other day.

thats what i was thinking... but considering that IWC aquatimer is what, a $2500 watch (used) then $250 to keep it running right is a bargain. The omega i just bought had a service a couple of months ago that cost 45% of the value of the watch. :-O

does anyone remember the old cassette head demagnetizers? I used to use one of those as a kid on my parents Akai tape deck from time to time... I wonder if it would work the same?

If i remember right you start close and work it in counter-clockwise direction moving further and further away each time you circle, and in bigger circles...

I tried to do some research on magnetic flux... pretty interesting... about how most 400 series stainless IS magnetic, and most 300 series stainless is NOT magnetic (or at least not much) except for 300 series thats been COLD rolled.. I didn't know, well, at least not in that much detail.

The Boschett boasts 316L "surgical grade" stainless, and none of it that i know of is "cold rolled" (its all milled, including the clasp) so theres a reasonable chance that the stainless around the watch would somewhat disrupt a magnetic flux field (did i say that right? lol)

All that said, i'm not disagreeing with Buccleuch, as honestly i don't know a damn thing about watches!

I've zero'ed (well, almost) both the Boschett and Omega with each other and the "us .GOV" official time website... Wish the Boschett had a hacking function, but i lucked out and its exactly 1sec behind the official time, so i have my starting point. I suspect both will be off in a day... i think the Omega runs about 3+ a day, but not sure yet.

I really need to pick up a winder too... any suggestions?

Sam - does that supercompressor have a high domed crystal? I started checking out some models that had the really high domes and i think they're sexy... I was actually a little bummed when the Boschett showed up with a completely flat crystal, although it does fit the design of the watch well.

I bought my demagnetizer several years ago and didn't pay close to that price. The other side of that is if you don't have one, you'd have to send the watch to a service shop, and that service charge - they'll want to do other things like service the movement, etc. - will set you back more than that $250.

That jeweler's demagnetizer is pretty simple. Plug it in, let it charge until the red LED lights, put the watch on the target, and press the button. Simple.

Alas, my old Aquatimer doesn't get much wrist time these days, since I'm wearing my Rolex Daytona all the time now.

not even close to a good fake. Not only is the miniscule date window a classic tell, it looks like they molded that case out of play doh.

I would call it a decent fake, I've certainly seen much worse. But these are some dead giveaways. I hope whoever has bid $1100 for it is happy with their $20 watch.

I was in Shanghai years ago, where you could of course buy fake watches on every street corner. At one point I told a seller I didn't like what he had, so he pulled out a real Rolex brochure of all their current watches and asked which one I wanted, no problem.
When I was there, the fakes came in A, B or C grade.

C were quartz, terrible quality, misspelling, etc. We haggled a guy down to 20 watches for 100RMB ($12)
B were pretty good, about this this one, mostly accurate, however chronometers and such didn't function properly. Maybe $20 each
A was a good story. We asked on vendor for "the good stuff". This was a teenage girl, she took two of us out of the market, down a maze of alleys (into the real Shanghai), up into an apartment building that never would have met any US building code ever written, and in to a room about 10'x10'. On all four walls were narrow shelves, all the way around the room, about 8 rows high. The shelves were neatly laid out with every watch brand and model you could think of, all with proper looking boxes, hang tags, manuals, etc. These were very good watches, the bands were good, everything worked, they were the right weight, etc. These watches were $75-$200. At one point we had to turn off the lights and sit quietly for about 10 minutes while the fake purse room next door was busted by the local cops. It was pretty amazing, and this was just one little room in one little corner of a huge city in a huge county.